Office Memo

Dear Anonymous Car-Driving Member of Staff,

You recently sent me a verbal request via one of the office ladies. You wondered whether I might park my Harley on a gravel verge, instead of taking up a ‘car space’ in the staff parking area.

The answer is an emphatic no. For lots of reasons.

1. I’m staff and I need to park. That is what the staff parking area is for.
2. There’s no dedicated motorcycle parking at school – simply a ‘staff parking area’. I park in a designated parking space, just like everybody else. Anybody else who rides a motorcycle is welcome to share that space with me.
3. Piglet is a road bike, not a dirt bike. I am not going to try to manhandle 250kgs of Harley Davidson onto a small sloping patch of fine-crushed gravel on a clay base. You are totally clueless if you think that would be a simple thing to do. Gravel is unstable and slippery, and the clay beneath it turns into even slipperier mud in the rain. Given my history, it’s best avoided.  
4. Said gravel patch is used as a thoroughfare by students crossing the access road, and I’m not prepared to leave said Harley Davidson in their path.
5. I take up one parking space, which is no more than anybody else.  The difference is, I use single-person transportation. Perhaps there’d be more room in the parking area if a few more people rode single-person transport instead of whopping great 4-wheel drives or family sedans that are made to carry 4 or more people.
6. I am usually the first or second person to arrive in the morning, and the parking area is empty then. Perhaps you should get to work earlier.

Thank you, that is all.

The Cruiser Quest - an unexpected twist

I went to the GP (that's the doctor GP, not the motoGP) this morning, to get my xray results. The good news is that my bone has mended. The bad news is that it's going to be pretty fragile for a while yet, so I need to be careful. I was given the heads-up about that by my lovely GP a while ago anyway, along with the exhortation to 'get thee a cruiser' - so, no surprises there.

Next stop was Eurotune, the Triumph dealership in Queanbeyan. Helen & Anders were really helpful. I sat on an America - HUGELY imposing and very heavy. It was parked on a very slight slope, but I couldn't haul it upright off the side-stand, so that was that. Bye Bye America. Next -  the lovely Bonneville. The T100 was, alas, too tall. The SE was a much better fit, although I still couldn't get my feet flat, possibly because of the position of the pegs. Who on earth put them right where I would put my feet in order to get them flat on the ground? I wonder whether the pegs can actually be moved? Straddle-walking the bike would be pretty much an impossibility, coz my little legs won't touch the ground if I stretch out past the end of those bloody pegs. Sheesh, I hate being this short! I booked a test ride anyway, for next Monday.

That sweet Harley Sportster 883 Superlow has really taken my fancy, so I headed to Robbo's Motorcycles back in Canberra to have another sit on it and to book a test ride. Lo and behold, Blake, the sales guy, said I could have a ride on it this arv. I fanged home to get my gear and fanged back to Fyshwick in record time.

And then I couldn't do it. (This is the bad bit. Look away if you don't want to see a grown woman cry.) I sat on that nice, low, easy-to-ride, beaut little bike and the last 6 years of riding just evaporated. I was back at Stay Upright with my heart thumping out of my chest and tears in my eyes, so terrified that I couldn't move. WTF?

Blake was brilliant. I would've been fine once I actually got out on the road, and I think he knew that. Another few minutes and all would've been ok, I think (maybe). The boss, though, told him to pull the pin on the test ride. How farking embarrassing. Blake was an absolute champion:

"Don't beat yourself up over it - the last time you were on a bike you fell off and broke your pelvis. And this is an unfamiliar bike, unfamiliar riding style. Why wouldn't you be nervous? Be kind to yourself."

I still felt like the world's biggest loser. I'm giving myself tonight to be a big sook, then tomorrow I'm going to give myself a very stern talking-to. I wonder whether it would be useful to get out on the road on something more familiar, just for my first ride, post-accident? A little GPX or something small like that? Despite the sporty ride position, it'd get me out there in the traffic on two wheels, juggling levers etc.

The other thing that I guess has bothered me is this - I've never taken a bike for a test ride in my life. I've never ridden anybody else's bike. I've never test-driven a car. I'm so nervous about the possibility of damaging someone else's ride that I just can't do it. Maybe THAT's the problem (in which case the previous paragraph about test-riding a little GPX is rendered null and void!)

I think if I were to just buy the bloody bike I'd be able to ride it out of the showroom, no probs - but then, what if I hated it after 50kms? That has never happened with any of my other bikes - I've fallen in love with each one (especially my last SV) almost instantly - but what if??? What if this horrible fear means I've lost my nerve altogether?  Wouldn't I know it already? Wouldn't that have manifested as a "Hmmm, don't think I'll bother getting another bike" mindset? Surely my desperate need to get back on a bike means that I haven't lost my nerve, right? That this is a temporary setback, yes?

Okay, so tonight - perhaps some self-indulgent snivelling, maybe even a pizza - and definitely a Wild Turkey while I feel sorry for myself... Tomorrow, a big bowl of HTFU for breakfast, and it'll be a new day. Thank goodness.

Betty's Cruiser Quest

Bikers are a clannish lot. If you ride a sportsbike, it’s the only sort of bike worth riding. Cruisers are for fat old men or outlaw bikie gangs, and don’t get me started on girly scooters! And then there’s the marque loyalty and stereotyping. BMWs are for old people and accountants, Harleys are for outlaws or weekend warrior accountants, Ducatis are for poseurs and speed freaks with too much money (but probably not accountants).

I’ve always ridden Jap bikes, mostly Suzukis of the sporty type. I’ve never wanted to ride anything else. And I'm just as prejudiced and clannish as the next sportsbike rider.

There was something a bit karmic, then, in my doctor’s suggestion that I get a cruiser. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. You need to be sitting on your arse (that’s a medical term), and not your pubic bone, he said. The bottom line, then: cruiser or nothing, for the foreseeable future. It’s surprising how attractive the concept of a cruiser suddenly became.

And then I sat on some.

Japanese cruisers have taken the essence of the cruiser motorcycle and vamped it up to make it more muscular than its American inspiration, and that, I think, was a mistake. Even on Suzuki’s entry-level M50 (with chrome-painted plastic!) I felt like a pimple on a pumpkin.  If motorcycles were horses, sportsbikes would be thoroughbreds and cruisers would be Clydesdales. (I suppose that would make scooters those little Shetland ponies you ride at school fetes. Ooh-er, slap my wrist, tee hee!)

My latest quest, then, is to find the perfect Betty-sized cruiser. After sitting on (but not test-riding – yet!) millions of the things, I have refined my wish-list.

It can’t be a 250cc jobbie. Tiny tank, no guts – and they feel like a postie bike (which is fine if you’re a postie). I want a bit more road-presence than that. And a decent-sized fuel tank.

It can’t have footboards – I find them uncomfortable. Let’s face it, I find that whole feet-forward thing weird anyway – and what I’ve noticed is that the bikes with footboards tend to be the biggest, most muscular cruisers, made for people with feet the size of New Zealand. Footpegs for me, thanks.

And while we’re on the subject of footpegs, I’d like them not too far forward. The long wheelbase of a cruiser and the shortness of me means that in order to sit with legs stretched forward to reach the pegs, and arms stretched out to reach the bars, I’m not going to cruise comfortably – I’m going to be bent like a paperclip.

No chrome! Okay okay, we're talking cruisers, and that's going too far. How about 'as little chrome as I can get away with'?

Is anybody else hearing the strains of The Impossible Dream right now?

My quest has taken me to just about every bike dealership in Canberra, whenever I could steal out of Marking Hell for an hour. What an adventure. Even being a pimple on a pumpkin is preferable to huddling over piles of exams. Sitting on a motorcycle, even one that doesn’t fit, puts a grin on my face like nothing else can. 

Watch this space.

The Veteran Vintage & Classic Motorcycle Club of ACT - Annual Rally - what a blast!

Note: this is being written in a David Attenborough nature documentary semi-whisper, so you need to read it the same way.

1914 Monarch - yes, it goes! Magnificent!

In the genus  Motorcyclista there  exists a somewhat peculiar species of enthusiast known as the motorcyclo aficionado superretro.  Often (but not always) characterised by grey hair and an ingenious emergency toolkit, individuals of this species are solitary creatures, often spending months – even years - secreted in large backyard sheds and garages with their ancient machines, performing fascinating rituals with spanners and oxy-torches, paints and polishes,  and pistons, plugs and points, or scouring eBay for spare parts. 

Once a year, at the height of summer, the individuals heed a mysterious visceral Call to Assembly with others of the species, and Nature pulls them inexorably to a meeting place like the Carotel motel in Canberra. They come from all over, and in large numbers, in cars or vans, towing trailers loaded with precious cargo. A hardy few even risk riding their lovingly-restored motorcycles - if they don’t have to go too far.

Once there, they indulge in time-honoured rituals like beer-drinking and bike-judging, and they tell restoration sagas and breakdown stories in the lost and lyrical language of imperial measurement. Iconic names trip from their tongues - Rudge, BSA, Ariel, Indian, Vincent, AJS Matchless, Triumph, Harley Davidson, Ducati...

 

 

 

They go for short rides that culminate in magnificent morning teas. (A keen eye can identify their feeding places by the spots of engine oil that speckle the car parks where they have congregated).

They have a Presentation Dinner that honours the most perfect and noble among their number.

Individuals of the species trailerus breakdownii  exist in happy symbiosis with the aficionado superretros, and can often be seen retrieving those unfortunate superretros whose ancient machines have broken down in ways that will not be remedied easily by the roadside. Nobody sneers or scoffs. Instead, they applaud the pluckiness of the individual and the bike, and thank the Powers That Be that it wasn't them.

On our journey this weekend, one fortunate BSA devotee had his sidestand returned to him from whence it had fallen off on the Cotter Road, but the owner of the lost Triumph footpeg cover remained elusive, as Triumph devotees often do. 

 

1923 Rudge - the King of the Rally.

 

Yes, that is carpet on the footboards - carpet your great gran would be proud of!

 

Thank you to the VVCMCC for a lovely weekend. Great bunch of people, a great event. I had a lovely time tagging along on my brand new Suzuki SV650S,  and nobody made me feel like a fraud, ha ha! Here’s their website – enjoy!

Beanz - now with meatballs

The title of this post is a quote from Dave at Bruce's Motorcycle Repairs. He calls me Miss Beanz (coz Beanz Meanz Heinz, remember?) And those meatballs he's talking about? They're not just meatballs - they're red hot Cajun meatballs.

The boys at Bruce's gave the Crow his 1000km service today - and installed a Yoshimura muffler. Here's a before & after shot:

Before, with stock muffler

After, with carbon-fibre oval Yoshi slip-on

How hot does this look? (Hint: the correct answer is 'red hot Cajun hot').

And if you think it looks hot, you ought to hear it! It's not that it's loud, as such, because it isn't - it has its baffle securely bolted in. But the note of the exhaust has changed completely. The Yoshi grabs that lovely natural V-twin double-throb by the goolies and gives it a giant hit of testosterone. The Crow's voice dropped an octave today and turned into a deep, throaty growl. My new bike is now the two-wheeled equivalent of a full-on hairy-chested alpha male.

I'm in love.

Meet the Crow

Last time I bought a new bike, back in April 2008, I picked it up from Dahlitz Motorcycles on the Friday and booked it in for its 1000km service – for the following Monday.

It hasn't been so easy this time. Getting the all-important 1000km service next week is essential, before Bruce's Motorcycle Repairs closes down for a well-earned Christmas holiday.

I've been wanting to write about my NEW new bike, but it's been shut in the shed for the last three weeks, and has hardly come out. Record-breaking rain in the wettest December I've ever seen in Canberra, and the presence of the Yak (my car), have turned me into (I can hardly bring myself to say it) a fairweather rider! Nooooooooooo!

In more than three weeks I've only managed to put 700kms on it (and 200 of those were today). Last week I went from home (Marked A on the map) to the Kippax shops (marked E) via Gungahlin and Watson, turning an 8km round trip into a desperate 40km one, just to warm up the tyres and blow some cobwebs out of my head!


View Larger Map

It's no wonder my mood's been somewhere between “a bit down” and “subterranean”.

But – today – the Crow got a proper airing. Here he is.

He's a 2010 SV650S (the Bomber was the 2008 model). He's called the Crow, or Crowie, because of his glossy blackness. Also because when he goes fast, I will make one of the famous crow-calls that got Graham Kennedy taken off TV back in the 70s (remember those?)

F a a a a a a a a a a r k !

Handsome beastie, isn't he?

Today we (the Crow and I) went to Yass to get fuel, and continued to Boorowa before coming home – a little over 200kms altogether. I was very tempted to keep going to Wyangala Dam, to see what it looks like at 89% of capacity (wow! In the drought it got down to about 6%!) Note to self: that might be a nice ride between Christmas and New Year...

The Crow handles better than the poor old Bomber did. Maybe the Bomber had had too many mishaps. Maybe, after 68,000kms, his steering head bearings were tired. Who knows? The Crow, though, tips neatly and effortlessly into turns, and the front end seems to hug the road better. From the very beginning with the Bomber I thought he felt a bit strange, and put it down to the change in bikes from the trusty, solid GS500F to the nimbler, more waspish SV. After the Unaugural splat back in May of this year, though, I never felt particularly safe when cornering – but I put that down to me being a chickenshit, and having lost confidence... I'm starting to think it was the bike, because there's none of that feeling on the Crow. It's a nice bike!

I see adventures ahead! And now that the school holidays are here, what am I waiting for? Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Getting the Toad on the Road

It's been a while. The Toad – Pete's Harley – has been sitting in his shed for a couple of years now. Sad. But all that's about to change! He'll be on the road in time to ride to Phillip Island for the motoGP, and yesterday was the first step in the great Get the Toad on the Road adventure.

I was up at sparrow's, and on the road by 6am, very excited about road-testing my new helmet - an Arai Vector. Pete was still fast asleep by the time I got there at about 10.15 - what a surprise, ha ha!

Seeing as the poor old Toad has been languishing in the shed for so long, Smack (he in Hobart, known for his evil t-shirts and his many Ducatis) decided Pete needed a bit of a kick-start with the job – pulling the trike apart is not a job for one person - so he sneakily engaged the help of some bike blokes from a net forum, BIKE ME!

So - Daytona Man, Spotted Quoll and Tim lobbed at Pete's place around the middle of the day and got the job well underway. Smack, the brains behind the operation, wasn't able to make it, so the rest of us ate the pea and ham soup he had requested. (I kept a couple of portions in the freezer for you Smack!)

There was much beer-witching and much hilarity. A bunch of blokes sitting in a shed, pulling a bike to bits, drinking beer and talking about – you guessed it, bikes – on a glorious sunny Saturday – does life get any better?

It will, as soon as Pete puts the bike back together again!

Thanks Smack, for being so sneaky ;-) and thanks guys, for your muscle, your know-how, your hard work and your good company!

Adventures in my microcosm

Remember that old cartoon show about the medical crew and their spaceship that were shrunk to microscopic size every episode, to travel through a patient's body, mending things? (Or did I dream that? It sounds too weird, but I think it was called Fantastic Voyage or something).

Well, I feel a bit like that – as if my world has shrunk – or at least, as if I've shrunk within it. My bike used to take me all over the place. No destination was too far for me and the Bomber, but now just about all of my adventures take place within my suburban block in one of Canberra's less salubrious suburbs. Little things have become huge. Sure, I go to work and back every day, courtesy of some lovely people from my workplace, and there's the occasional outing with the Ancient Submariner, who is probably the kindest, most thoughtful man I have ever met. Most of my adventures these days, though, are those little domestic events that are too trivial to think about in the normal scheme of things.

Last weekend it was changing the sheets and hanging out the washing – like, WOW! Has my world shrunk so much that I actually find that “an adventure”? I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I'll probably do both. Right now I'm flatter than the Bomber's battery; flatter than Posh Spice without a push-up bra; flatter than a cat who's wandered onto a main road in peak hour. You get the idea.

Speaking of the Bomber's flat battery... Suzuki must've had a Ducati designer on board when they created the SV650. Fair dinkum. On my other bikes it was a simple matter of turning the key to remove the seat, and voila! There was the battery. Not so on the SV - to get to the battery you have to remove a couple of fairing panels and then unbolt the seat.

So I put on my Can-Do hat and hobbled out to the bike shed. I'm still on the crutches, but have started putting a little weight on the broken foot. It makes life so much easier, which is just as well, because hooking up the battery charger ended up needing about 14 trips back and forth from the shed to the spare room where the tool cupboard lives, to find socket wrenches and hex keys. And the hammer. And the WD-40. That bike has been screwed together so tightly that even my newfound uber-muscles couldn't undo the bolts that hold the seat on. Just as well I had the hammer though – it came in handy to squash the fat juicy redback spider that had taken up residence next to the Bomber.

The Ancient Submariner arrived just as I got the final bolt out and lifted the seat. It was a million degrees in the shed and I was about to drown in a pool of my own perspiration, surrounded by hex keys and squashed spiders. My quad muscles were screaming from crouching at an unnatural angle in my moonboot to get at the bolts, and my wrists ached from fighting with the bolts – yeah, I was looking hot. To AS's credit he didn't run away screaming. In fact, he finished the delicate operation of hooking the charger up to the battery and bolting the seat and one of the fairing panels back on. When the battery has recharged I can handle the last of the fairing panels. I can handle anything!

So – the Bomber's battery is more or less easily fixed. Recharging my own battery is less simple, but I have a looong list of domestic adventures awaiting me today - vacuuming, scrubbing the shower, and my favourite - hobbling out into the garden and getting a bit of nature therapy. Armed with my little spray bottle of poison, those weeds that have taken advantage of my current incapacitation don't stand a chance. Don't mess with Betty!

Playing with poetry 1

Motorcycle Sonnet

Oh come with me along a winding trail
A mountain steep and shadowed in deep green
Each bend potential pain if we should fail
The answer, perfect trust in the machine
Each twist and turn a challenge for the mind
Defy the laws of reason! Love the fear!
And know each time we ride a perfect line
The summit and deliverance are near
Each throbbing beat of engine and of heart
A love-song in a symphony of light
Each swooping lean a moving work of art
A ballet of adrenalin and might
Only a rider knows the way it feels
To lean hard through life's corners on two wheels

(c) Sue Hines 2009

Heh heh

Bike Gear and Helmet Hair

According to Trinny & Susannah's Body Shape Calculator, I'm a Skittle. A shortish one. There are some things I should not ever wear - capri pants, wide belts, ankle strap shoes... that sort of thing. Thank God I'm a motorcyclist and I don't worry about any of that!

I have my summer bike gear and my winter bike gear - and all of it makes me look a bit like the Michelin Man! All that protective armour takes up space and adds unwanted inches all over the place. There's no point asking "Does my bum look big in this?" because there's only one answer when you're all geared up.

But I don't care that my bum looks the size of a small country in my protective pants - I want all the protection I can get if I go for a slide down the road on it!

And then there's helmet hair. There's no escaping it, although some lucky people don't seem to suffer from it as badly as others. Those people are inevitably men. Why is this so? Is male hair somehow genetically predisposed to come out of a long day inside a helmet looking good?


I suspect there really is a difference between boy hair and girl hair. This is the only explanation for the fact that boy haircuts only cost a fraction of what girl haircuts do.

Here's a true story. I asked a barber for a haircut once - short back and sides, I said. I don't cut women's hair, he said. I pointed at the bloke whose hair he'd just cut.

But I want a haircut just like that! I said.

He wouldn't do it. So I went to a hairdresser, got it cut super-short, paid the lady and went straight back to the barber. He took one look at my hair and said "Sheesh, if you'd told me that's what you wanted I could've done a better job."

He's lucky I wasn't PMSing.

I go to him now all the time. My hair is so fine and it grows in several different directions. It's plagued by cowlicks. The barber agrees that for me, shorter is better - especially as I'm always sticking my head into a helmet. He is a whiz with the scissors - a proper old style barber - and he cuts my hair just the way I want it!


Now I can forget to comb my hair and no-one can tell the difference! I can ride all day and my hair looks the same at the end of the day as it did at the beginning!

I save heaps on hair product, coz I just don't use it - and because I hardly have any hair, I hardly use any shampoo! WIN-WIN!

Don't I look like a boy though? I guess not - the bumps on the front help - and those special bum-enhancing padded pants would give just about any girl "childbearing hips"!

I love my gear!

Flashback: where it all began

I'm sure I had adventures before I started riding... I just can't remember them!

I learned to ride in April 2005. And May, June, July, August.... you get the idea. My friends mostly know the tragic story, but I'm recording it here for posterity.

Imagine this – a short, slightly-built woman. She's shy, a bit timid and has always been hopeless at tasks that require physical coordination. She can't work up a sweat in an aerobics class. By the time she's figured out how to put her arms and legs in the right spot to do the moves, the rest of the class has moved on to a new step. She can't dance either. She's stiff and unco. Learning how to drive a manual car is one of the great physical triumphs of her life. Got the picture? That's me.

I find myself, one sunny Saturday morning in April 2005, in the ladies' class at Stay Upright, scared but hopeful that by the end of the following day I'll be the proud holder of a learner rider's licence. I've already lined up a motorcycle to buy – a sweet little red Kawasaki GPX250. What an adventure!

An astute reader, especially one who rides a motorcycle, will probably be shaking his or her head right about now. You just know what's coming...

About halfway through the first morning, I've learned how to get on and off the bike. I've got over my shock at how big and heavy the riding school's Honda CB250 is. I've learned how to turn the engine on and off. Now I have to start the engine and ride the bike about 6 metres, to where the instructor is standing. My heart's pounding. My left leg is shaking with nervousness. My mouth is dry.

Somehow (you knew this would happen, didn't you?) it all goes horribly wrong. I crash the out-of-control bike into a concrete barrier, fall off, and learn the first big lesson of motorcycling – even small, low speed crashes hurt!

I get on again and promptly fall off. So I'm 'expelled' from the class, pretty much, and I limp home, a bundle of misery and bruises. Bugger. Motorcycling is harder than it looks.

When the bruises fade, I have another go at it – I may be unco, but I'm also remarkably (some would say 'ridiculously') stubborn. I rock up to my first 'remedial' lesson, and don't even get to turn on the engine. The instructor, a mature man with a bad back, spends the entire lesson pushing me around the riding range on the CB250, while I, for my part, keep falling over. Exasperated, Mr Instructor, whose back is killing him, calls an early halt to the lesson. I'm relieved, but also disappointed. I'd been so certain that I'd be able to ride properly by now. Mr Instructor asks if I have some kind of middle-ear problem and suggests I do some practice on a pushbike, where I'm less likely to kill myself. Once again, I take my bruised ego and shattered confidence home.

A new instructor greets me for my second remedial lesson. (I must've scared the first one off.) He's been briefed about my 'special problem'. He asks me to turn on the engine straight away, and to ride towards him. I can't believe what I'm hearing. Does the guy have a death-wish or what?

The engine purrs, I find friction point and start to ease off the rear brake. My left leg (that's the one that's holding me and the bike upright!) is shaking so much that I know I'm about to fall over, and that wouldn't be good, only 2 minutes into the lesson. I turn off the engine, rip off my gloves and remove my ridiculously expensive helmet which, just now, is looking like a complete waste of hard-earned cash.

“I'm sorry,” I say, battling girly tears, “I'm just wasting your time. I don't know what I was thinking! I'm going home.”

Robert is astounded. “But you've paid for a whole hour! Tell you what, you can just sit on the bike for an hour if you like. I won't watch. Just get yourself comfortable.”

But even sitting on the bloody thing makes me tremble. I feel so demoralised and pathetic – like the world's biggest loser. I climb off before the inevitable happens. By this stage, Robert must be thinking he's got some kind of loony on his hands.

“Let's get a coffee,” he says, “and you can calm down.”

I can't even get a spoonful of coffee out of the jar. The granules keep dancing off the spoon and flying around the room. Robert tries not to stare, and makes the coffee for both of us. I have to hold my cup with both hands to stop it spilling.

We talk about fear and about why I want to ride, (why do I want to ride? Just because...) and when the shaking stops, Robert suggests having another go at getting on the dreaded CB250.

So I mount the beast, which seems to be getting bigger and more evil with every passing second. By the end of the hour I've managed to make it move a total of about 15cm. Robert hasn't made me feel like the idiot he probably thinks I am, I haven't fallen over (although I've wobbled rather a lot, and nearly panicked a bit), and I've agreed to come back for another lesson - that's a Good Thing, right?

By remedial lesson number five I can spend 15 minutes at a time on the bike before becoming overwhelmed, and have managed to reduce the number of falls per lesson to one or two. I've learned how to pick up a dropped bike (a handy – no, essential - skill for someone like me!) I've had lessons in icy wintry weather and pouring rain, all through the long Canberra winter. I've had lessons with just about every one of the instructors at Stay Upright. I can just imagine their conversations. They probably have a book running on how many times I'll drop the bike every lesson. They can't believe I'm still chucking money at them to fall off one of their bikes. I want this so much I can taste it. I salivate like one of Pavlov's dogs every time I see a motorcycle – it's insane!

After remedial lesson number ten (yes, you did read that correctly – number TEN), I haven't dropped the bike for a while, and can ride around the riding range, changing gears and everything! I book in to do the weekend course again.

It's a proud moment in late September when Robert hands me my certificate of completion, and tells the class that Betty has just been awarded the most expensive L-plates in history. I'm in the Stay Upright Hall of Fame – Most Determined Unco Ever. Finally I can get on that sweet little red GPX that's been sitting in my yard for 5 months – hoo-bloody-ray!

Nose Hair

I always thought nose hair was strictly for older gentlemen. I was wrong. As I get closer to leaving my fabulous forties behind, my nostrils have begun sprouting downy little blonde hairs that poke just the barest of millimetres beyond my nostrils and quiver expectantly in the fresh air.

The fact that they are blonde is good. The fact that they are nose hairs is not.

I'm not bothered by them as a sign of my encroaching 'crone' status, ha ha. They're just one very small part of the wonderful process of ageing. With wisdom comes nose hairs - ok, maybe not. But hey, give me nose hairs over arthritis or hot flushes any day.

As a motorcyclist though, I have to say that nose hairs really suck. They're dangerous. A single rogue nose hair, wiffling in the breeze, can very quickly ruin your enjoyment of a ride - and your very sanity. The incessant tickle tickle tickle as it wafts against the tender skin just outside your nostril is enough to reduce the hardiest rider to a gibbering wreck in less than 10 kilometres. When you're riding, focus is important - it's not good to be distracted, but a nose hair will distract you to, um, distraction...

And there's not a damned thing you can do about it. Oh, you can try. You can pull up your visor and rub furiously at the tip of your nose with a gloved hand, but the nose hair just lays low for a couple of seconds. As soon as the coast is clear - boing! - out it springs again. Nose hair is extremely resilient, not to mention sneaky.

If you leave your visor open you simply compound the problem because the nose hair acts as an attractant for small, very annoying flying things. They hit the nose hair and cause an instinctive gasp reaction which can (a) suck the stunned flying thing up your nose and down the back of your throat (not recommended) or (b) pull the stunned flying thing into your mouth and down the back of your throat (also not recommended). Choking and /or throwing up inside your helmet for any reason can really stuff up a good ride.

If the small annoying flying thing doesn't get sucked up your nose, it will usually end up lodged in the corner of your eye once the nose hair lets it go. Again, a good way to put a damper on an otherwise enjoyable ride.

OK, so close the visor. You'd think that'd help, wouldn't you? It doesn't. Actually, it exacerbates the NHTF (Nose Hair Tickle Factor). If air didn't circulate inside your helmet you'd suffocate, so all helmets allow a certain amount of air to circulate - and guess what? Nostrils being one (well, two...) of those important air-intake thingies, the circulating air always - ALWAYS circulates past your nose hair, flirting with it, tickling and caressing it even. The nose hair squirms ecstatically in response - and the rider goes NUTS!

Nose Hair is a Health Hazard!

Hot tip for today: if you must have nose hair (and it seems that, as a woman of a certain age, I must...) - keep it trimmed! I remember giggling at bizarre circular gadgets, years ago, that were called "nose and ear hair trimmers". I wish I hadn't laughed quite so derisively, and I wish I knew where to buy one now!

Whizzing Past Spiders

So tonight I walk out of my room into the dark hallway, and an enormous shadow detaches itself from the ceiling and abseils in a graceful arc in front of me. It drops to the floor and scuttles off. It's dark, so I could be mistaken, but it seems about the size of a small car.

Of course, barefoot and terrified of giant spiders, I jump up and down and scream a bit, and fumble for a lightswitch.

No sign of the giant spider, but I KNOW I glimpsed it abseilling and scuttling, and when I walk into its effing web I scream a bit more. The sticky rope clings to my hair, my shoulders, my back.... What if the spider is clinging to me as well?

Aaaaargh, I hate this!

I run around the house a few times, shimmying and shaking and waving my arms in the special spider-dislodging dance, then I check the bathroom, the loo and the study. No sign of anything enormous and eight-legged. (Aside: I'm not absolutely sure, but I think that's actually worse than seeing it and knowing where it is...)

After I spend the next half hour huddled in my room in abject terror (with my mate Johno laughing at me via Messenger), nature wants to take its course. Of course. Murphy's Law dictates that the wall behind the dunny will have become the favourite stopping place of Ernest the Giant Spider (they're marginally less terrifying if I name them). Of course again. Yep. That bugger is even bigger with the light
on...

A couple of years ago I bought a nifty device called a Whiz, which I thought would be ideal for those terrible times when you're caught short on the road and you don't want to have to drop your dacks in snake and spider territory. It's just the thing for big tough girl bikers with tragic bladders, ha ha.

I have diligently packed it on every long trip - but have never had the opportunity to try it out properly for real etc, by the side of the road,where God intended. Have had a couple of half-hearted attempts at home, butyou feel a bit silly really.

But not tonight. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Turning my back and baring my bum at a spider the size of New Zealand is something I simply cannot do.

Thanks Whiz. http://www.whizbiz.com.au/